SOURCE: "Cotton Mather and His Writings on Witchcraft," in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol. 18, 1924, pp. 31-59.

In the essay below, Holmes surveys Mather's works and contends that his writings on and role in the witchcraft trials hold a relatively minor place in his career.

Cotton Mather's entrance into the world's annals of witchcraft, in the character in which some of our historians have portrayed him, did not come about primarily through his two major works on that subject nor through the relative importance of his witchcraft writings as compared with his other works. It came about through that inconsiderable manuscript of his concerning the comparatively insignificant "witchcraft" case of Margaret Rule, and by his contact over it with Robert Calef.

Mather opponents have tuned their fiddles to Calef's key. Many a tune have they fiddled, out of harmony with truth, respecting Cotton Mather and...